BBQ season in the UK again - 2/3 dead probes?


 
L

Lee Davison

New member
Got the heatermeter out for some pork today, and found that 2/3 of my probes seem to have died :( they've not been extensively used, not sure what might have killed them unless I introduced some water in cleaning and putting them away last time. Here's my pit trace where I was swapping the probes about trying to find the cause, you can see the temperature reported is all over the place, and the meter was reading minus figures often :(

1650822303104.png

I'm a bit annoyed as I went for nice probes (I thought) - the ones from ETI here: https://thermometer.co.uk/thermomet...-probe.html?search_query=ChefAlarm+&results=6

Are they really as fragile as this? Should I look for others? I thought these were the thermoworks ones, as they're listed as the ones for the ChefAlarm.
 
Pretty sure it's the probes in this case as the problem follows the probes as I move them. If you look at the beginning of the chart, the good probe is outside the pit, then I swap them and the good probe is in the pork, then when I work out I have bad probes at 10:20 I set the good probe to be the pit probe. The bit in between was plugging and replugging the busted ones to work out what's going on.

Pics though:IMG_20220425_134500.jpgIMG_20220425_134623.jpgIMG_20220425_134601.jpgIMG_20220425_134552.jpgIMG_20220425_134642.jpgIMG_20220425_134447.jpg
 
Lee Davison said:
Are they really as fragile as this? Should I look for others? I thought these were the thermoworks ones, as they're listed as the ones for the ChefAlarm.
Click to expand...
Elektrickery is not my strong point. I take it you tried all 3 probes in all ports? Any sign of water ingress in the unit?
I use these probes on my DOT & Smoke. Never had an issue with them. I just clean them with a damp cloth.
I also use one of these. I find it less cumbersome, and good for smaller cuts.
I also use their pit monitor. Nice and compact.
 
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TonyUK said:
Elektrickery is not my strong point. I take it you tried all 3 probes in all ports? Any sign of water ingress in the unit?
I use these probes on my DOT & Smoke. Never had an issue with them. I just clean them with a damp cloth.
I also use one of these. I find it less cumbersome, and good for smaller cuts.
I also use their pit monitor. Nice and compact.
Click to expand...
No sign of damage. I can only assume I got them a little too wet, or left some moisture around that worked its way in when I packed down for the winter. I'm usually pretty careful though :(

I tried all the probs I have in the different ports, the problems definitely follow the probes. I've emailed the company to see if they're willing to do anything, as they're less than a year old.
 
Lee Davison said:
No sign of damage. I can only assume I got them a little too wet, or left some moisture around that worked its way in when I packed down for the winter. I'm usually pretty careful though :(
Click to expand...
I now keep all my gadgets and gizmos in a small air-tight plastic container for this very reason.
All my charcoal is in air-tight brewers fermenting buckets, or the surplus bags wrapped in black bin liners. I forgot to wrap one bag and had to throw it away a couple of weeks ago. No amount of fire could get it lit.
 
The ONLY time I have ever had probes fail was when I used to allow condensation/liquid to run down the cable into the probe fitting (I used to hang the cables in from the top vent).

Put them in the oven at low temp and let them dry out very well...they might work again.

That said, once I stopped hanging them from the top (and I also sealed up the connector with high temp food safe silicon), never had another one fail.
 
I contacted the store - they're looking into it for me. Hopefully they'll replace. In the meantime I will try baking moisture out in the oven as suggested, although I did leave the dead ones inside the pit this weekend to see if that'd help. Not 100% sure that's the issue though! We'll see.

Thanks for the info, it seems this is unusual, and they're normally pretty robust.
 
Okay, so I contacted ETI, and they were EXTREMELY helpful. The guy asked for a picture of the probes to see if there was anything obvious going on, and said that he alerted their QA people to keep an eye out for a bad batch.

He then sent out a replacement for the 2 bad ones, and from my pics he noted that I was just wrapping the probes around themselves, so set out some of their high-quality probe tidies to help me out with storing them better! Extremely good service, so UK users, I'd recommend these guys with no hesitation :)

Thanks Matthew @ ETI!
 
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